That’s what Jerry Brown called climate change skeptics. Actually he was a little more precise in his remarks: he called them political lemmings whose “cult-like behavior…would take us over the cliff.”

Brown made his comments addressing a high level climate conference at California Academy of Sciences. Also in attendance were the last Republican governor of California, Arnold Schwartzeneggar and Schwarzenegger, and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, the popular billionaire who has made climate issues a focus of his philanthropic activities. That the current Democratic Governor, Mr. Brown and Schwatzenegger would be on the same side when it comes to the threat climate change poses is hardly surprising. After all, California has experienced and is experiencing severe negative climate effects now, and all legitimate studies conducted by scientists (other than hack denialists funded by Big Oil) predict that the effects on our nation’s climate, people and economy will become more severe the longer we do nothing to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Brown said climate change has lengthened the state’s fire season and quickened its snowmelt, affecting agriculture and taxing public infrastructure.

He acknowledged Californians have been “squeezed” by the flagging economy, but he said investment is necessary to stem the effect of global warming. Brown is expected next year to propose a peripheral canal or other way to move water through or around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

“It will cost money,” he said. “But if we don’t do that, and the levees collapse in one of these extreme events, we could run out of fresh water.”

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/12/15/133268/calif-gov-brown-calls-doubters.html#ixzz1giCutNiU

If the world was governed by reason and logic former governors of Texas, Arizona and other states hard hit by severe droughts, wildfires, floods and other extreme weather events would join Brown and Schwartzenegger in seeking ways to mitigate the now unlikely unstoppable consequences of climate change. But, of course we don’t live in that world.

We live in a world where formerly relatively moderate Republicans like Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, and even that crazed bomb thrower Newt Gingrinch, all of whom formerly agreed that climate change was one of the most important issues facing the world, have changed their tune. Of course, they are Republicans who rely heavily on money from the fossil fuel industries to support their presidential runs. As for Rick Perry, well no governor of Texas has attacked the science of climate change more than he has, despite the severe drought and worst wildfire years on record for his state. Texas politicians are owned by Big Oil to a far greater extent than the even US Congress, as Dick Durbin admitted, is owned by Wall Street.

Furthermore, the hard core Republican base has been convinced by a massive disinformation campaign, led in no small part by Fox News, to a degree I still find hard to believe, that man made global warming is a hoax and a conspiracy foisted upon us by Al Gore and money grubbing scientists. No GOP candidate for any office (outside the State of Maine perhaps) can embrace the reality of the danger posed by climate change without losing a majority of GOP voters to other Republican candidates who will toe the “party” line on this issue.

So yes, Brown is right to call these republican political figures “political lemmings.” And undoubtedly the fact that Schwartzenneger cannot run for the Presidency has a lot to do with the fact that he signed into law the most extensive environmental legislation regarding climate by any state in America.

But whether Republican politicians are acting out of political self interest or political necessity in promoting the lies and deceits of the climate change deniers is beside the point. Other than the few Progressives in Congress what has the Obama administration done to address this issue. Oh, admittedly they are not as bad as the Bush administration, but that isn’t saying much. After Obama failed in 2009 and 2010 to pass a climate change bill through Congress, his administration pushed this issue to the back burner, the one that has been turned off.

In some respects its hard to blame him, considering the reluctance of so many Democrats in the House and Senate to push hard for that legislation. Many ran scared, fearing a backlash in the 2010 elections, but that merely showed voters how lacking in their conviction and how weak Congressional Democrats really were. And of course, many conservadems (those inimitable Blue Dogs) simply wouldn’t pass anything that they believed might hurt their re-election chances, much less a climate change bill. Not that it helped them any when the mid-terms were held — they still lost.

It seems there are a lot of political lemmings running around these days when to comes to climate issues. What once used to be a somewhat bi-partisan issue, has now become the third rail in American politics, though in a negative way. We see that cutting social security and medicare are no longer sacrosanct (thanks most recently to Ron Wyden for reminding of us of that new reality), but outside California and perhaps a few other states, and certainly at the Federal level, no one seems willing to touch the hot potato (no pun intended) of Climate Change, other than to talk about it endlessly.

And that, my friends, makes lemmings of us all, willing or not.